Ishaq's legs were spread straight out in front of him and his backside was cold. The folded canvas he was sitting on was a bad insulator.

Not that it mattered. He would not be sitting on it much longer.

The scraping stopped. He watched the tarp through the greenish tint of his face mask Curtains of sunlight hung along the side walls of the cave. They shifted and undulated as the wind pushed against the tarp.

The covering itself rattled against the hooks that held it in place.

Suddenly, the tarp dropped. Particles of ice that had collected on the outside flew, glistening in the sunlight. The shimmering beads died as two large, cylindrical canisters were lobbed in. They clanked on the cave floor and rolled toward Ishaq. They were already hissing and jetting thick clouds of smoke into the air and across the ground. Some of the gas unfurled sideways, and some of it was sprayed in his direction.

The Pakistani sat there, waiting calmly. The rolling green gas was still about fifteen meters away. The view to the nearest of the detonators remained unobstructed. He had a few more moments.

He began to pray.

Ishaq listened for the scraping to resume. After a moment it did, moving rapidly toward the front of the cave. He watched as the clouds of gas began to billow and roll aside as though people were moving through it.

The gas had nearly reached the explosives.

It was time.

The Muslim continued his silent prayer as he pressed the blue "engage" button. A light on top of the small controller came on. Ishaq quickly pressed the red "detonate" button below it.

For a blessed moment the sun shined all around Ishaq and he felt as if he had been embraced by Allah.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Washington, D. C.

Wednesday, 9:36 p. m.

"What the hell just happened, Stephen?" Bob Herbert asked.

Op-Center's intelligence chief had pulled his wheelchair deep under the desk. He was leaning over the speakerphone as he watched the Omni Com image on his computer. What he had said was not so much a question as an observation.

Herbert knew exactly what had happened.

"The side of the mountain just exploded," Viens said over the phone.

"It didn't just explode, it evaporated," Herbert pointed out.

"That blast had to have been the equivalent of a thousand pounds ofTNT."

"At least," Viens agreed.

Herbert was glad there was no sound with the image. Even just seeing the massive, unexpected explosion wakened his sensory memories. Tension and grief washed over him as he was reminded of the Beirut embassy bombing.

"What do you think. Bob? Was it set off by a sensor or motion detector?"

Viens asked.

"I doubt it," Herbert said.

"There are a lot of avalanches in that part of the world. They could have triggered the explosion prematurely."

"I didn't think of that," Viens admitted.

Herbert forced himself to focus on the present, not the past.